Freelance IllustratorPaddy Donnelly

Perch Redesign

Getting the chance to work on something as well established in the web design world as Perch was such an honour for me. Rachel & Drew were dream clients and I'm so pleased with how the redesign of the website turned out.

Redesigning an Established Brand

We started off with some Skype chats to go over what exactly the guys wanted to get out of the site redesign. As the Perch CMS had grown over the past three years, Rachel and Drew felt the site could use an upgrade. There were a few branding aspects of the site that the guys wanted to keep, but they were very open to new ideas from me and willing to take a few chances. After our initial conversations, I began sketching out some first ideas and we went through some moodboarding exercises to establish a look and feel that both the guys and myself were excited about. After this we created extensive wireframes before diving into the design.

The Perch brand has always been very playful, incorporating sketchy illustration elements throughout the site. I wanted to push this up a level and draw people in with an engrossing experience on the homepage, while still retaining the much loved Perch bird character of course.

Telling Tales

Story-telling was a device we were keen to use throughout the site. All too often in websites, pages like the about page can be afterthoughts which are dumping grounds for text. We wanted to use these pages to draw users in and introduce them to the Perch experience in a more effective way. The fact that the guys wanted to dedicate so much time to crafting something original for sections like the about page, just shows how much care they put into their product.

Rachel and Drew were an absolute pleasure to work with on this project. Perch is their baby, but they weren’t afraid to take some chances with the design, trying new things and making bold decisions with the site. From the start, our goal was to make something great for the Perch products that we were all proud of, and that’s exactly what we got.